Merry Christmas

Greetings from the Sisters of the Little Way

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas! We realize that each of you likely hold complex realities in your heart at this time of the year. We want you to know that we are uniting our prayers to yours in this season and we offer them from our own places of hopes, questions, and searching. 

We take solace in the reality that our Messiah chose to be born in a remote and impoverished place. Saint Paul tells us that “though he was in the form of God [Jesus] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil 2:6). This year, we hold this seeming incongruous dichotomy in our hearts with all of you. 

Amid the many incongruous realities of our lives, we answer yes to the Lord each day in this time of newness. Some days are tough and it can be heavy to be holding the suffering of members of the Church alongside the questions that arise and clamor to the surface of our hearts. Every day though we offer all that we experience for you and for the people we are called to serve in our mission. 

Our mission to reach those who are on the fringes of the Church, especially those who have been wounded, abused, or scandalized by members of the Church, calls us to a sober place. But as we contemplate the disquieting image of the Christ Child laid in an animal’s feeding trough, we have hope that the same Jesus who speaks into each of our own places of personal darkness will also speak to the Church in this moment where stark faith and urgent questions demand true reform. 

During our Christmas novena, we will be praying that this season is filled with peace, healing, and a sense of the Lord’s nearness to you and to those for whom you pray.

We love you all so much and keep you close to our hearts in prayer.

In the Newborn Christ Child,

The Sisters of the Little Way